Another 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday.
Why it matters: With the more than 16 million jobless claims filed over the past three weeks, more jobs have now been lost in the last month than were gained since the Great Recession.
The big picture: The weekly unemployment filings report has become a must-watch for Wall Street and economists. It offers the timeliest glimpse into how efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak are ravaging the job market.
The bottom line: In just one month, the coronavirus economic shutdown has caused a staggering 22 million Americans to lose their jobs.
It feels like some big, terrible switch got flipped when the coronavirus upended our lives — so it’s natural to want to simply flip it back. But that is not how the return to normalcy will go.
The big picture: Even as the number of illnesses and deaths in the U.S. start to fall, and we start to think about leaving the house again, the way forward will likely be slow and uneven. This may feel like it all happened suddenly, but it won’t end that way.
What’s next: Nationally, the number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. is projected to hit its peak within the next few days. But many big cities will see their own peaks significantly later — for them, the worst is yet to come.
The future will come in waves — waves of recovery, waves of more bad news, and waves of returning to some semblance of normal life.
What the post-lockdown world will look like:
And there will be more waves of infection, even in areas that have passed their peaks.
This is all but inevitable in the U.S., too, especially as travel begins to pick back up. Some places may need to shut down again, or at least tighten back up, if these new flare-ups are bad enough.
What we’re watching: We’ll still need a lot more diagnostic testing to make this process work. Public health officials need to be able to identify people who might be spreading the virus before they begin to feel sick, and then identify the people they may have infected.
The real turning point won’t come until there’s a proven, widely available treatment or, even better, a widely available vaccine.
The bottom line: “I’m not going back to Disneyland, I’m not going to take a cruise again, until we have a very aggressive testing system or we have very effective therapeutics or a vaccine,” Gottlieb said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-suggests-doctors-complain-lack-141500695.html
Donald Trump has implied doctors and elected officials say they do not have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) and other materials to get on television amid the coronavirus crisis.
The US president had a row with Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, over the shortage of PPE, which includes essential gear such as hand sanitiser, gloves, aprons, and face masks, during his coronavirus press briefing.
Acosta said: “We hear from a lot of people who see these briefings as sort of ‘happy talk’ briefings. And some of the officials don’t paint as rosy a picture of what is happening around the country. If you look at some of these questions – do we have enough masks? No. Do we have enough tests? No. Do we have enough PPE? No.”
Mr Trump interjected: “Why would you say that? The answer is yes. I think the answer is yes.”
Acosta referred to doctors and other medical officials who have vented their frustrations about the dearth of essential equipment on CNN.
The president hit back: “A lot of it is fake news.”
Acosta said: “Doctors and medical officers come on our air and say ‘we don’t have enough tests, we don’t have enough masks’.”
Mr Trump chipped in: “Well yeah, depending on your air they are always going to say that because otherwise, you are not going to put them on.”
The spat comes as doctors and healthcare workers across America are battling against a shortage of face masks which safeguard them against coronavirus – sparking fears doctors will not be able to provide life-saving care if they fall ill.
America has become the first country in the world to record more than 2,000 people dying from coronavirus in one day alone, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.
People who contract coronavirus in the US are at greater risk than those in the UK or Canada due to America not having a national health service.
Americans are at risk of running up bills for coronavirus treatment which force them to fork out tens of thousands of dollars. The situation is exacerbated by the fact many have lost their healthcare insurance due to job losses linked to the pandemic.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-lockdowns-end-live-shrunken-122800321.html
When the US emerges from its various shades of shelter-in-place orders, it will emerge to a shrunken global economy. One that will not easily be inflated living within parameters the coronavirus demands.
Financial transactions are a form of human interaction, and even after strict orders to stay at home are lifted, Americans will need to limit human interaction to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. One projection from the Department of Homeland Security, first reported by the New York Times, imagines a world where schools remain closed, 25% of Americans work from home, and social distancing remains in place through the summer.
And people will still be scared. They will know that there is an deadly virus infecting people who interact with other people.
In this scenario, back to work doesn’t mean back to growth because people won’t be spending money the way they did before. Back to work simply means finding a more sane, stable way to maintain society until we get a vaccine. There will be no V-shaped recovery. This is a marathon, and if we’re lucky, we will limp across the finish line.
As incomplete as it is, China is the best picture we have for understanding what a life after lockdown looks like, and it doesn’t look like a booming economy. 460,000 businesses closed permanently in China during the first quarter.
One Chinese county has gone back into lockdown already. In Beijing — where state media says epidemic prevention and control will “probably” become “long-term normal” — restaurants have been ordered to maintain social distance by cutting seating in half and limiting tables to three people. Customers have been slow to come back anyway.
All of this is to say that even if we’re out of lockdown, this saga isn’t remotely over.
What China’s economy is telling us is that once this weird supply funk brought on by everyone staying home is over, and some people are able to go back to work, we’ll still have a demand crisis. Even though the virus has been contained analysts at Oxford Economics told clients it expects to see “basically no growth” in China this year. With other global economies weakened it will sell fewer exports.
Zhu Jun, director of the international department of the People’s Bank of China, said that there’s a small chance the world risks another Great Depression. Cheery, I know, but until there’s a vaccine, optimism will be in short supply.
Here in the US, just as in China, people will be broke and businesses will be broken. Money will be scarce. Demand will be depressed not just because of a lack of funds, but because people will have changed their behavior to avoid getting sick.
Wall Street it seems, hasn’t processed this bad news yet. It’s taking this pandemic day-by-day, not looking at life after lockdown. This week the market rallied on news that all over the US, even New York City, the curve is flattening. It was a silly rally.
It’s silly for the market to declare victory before we’ve even seen how much damage has been done (that will take months at least). It’s silly to expect any kind of stability until we know what kind of demand a post-shelter-in-place, pre-vaccine American economy will have.
Finally, we don’t know how long Washington will be in a giving mood. So far the Federal Reserve has pulled out all the stops, and Congress has approved trillions in aid. But will Washington keep sending checks to unemployed Americans until we have a vaccine?
I think back to all the times I’ve heard CEOs and Wall Street types talk about uncertainty around regulations, or elections, or literally anything else that has happened in my life time, and I have to laugh. All of it seems silly compared to the uncertainty before us right now.
It is quite possible that sometime this summer scientists will develop a treatment for COVID-19 that makes the symptoms much more mild — something more like a standard, week-long flu. That discovery could make things a lot easier, and really bolster confidence enough to bring the economy back until we have a vaccine. But government officials obviously can’t plan with that in mind. Neither can businesses.
And so, those charged with imagining the worst case scenario must imagine a world where Americans are again forced to shelter-in-place to flatten the curve. Homeland Security’s projections put a resurgence of the virus somewhere around the end of summer to the beginning of fall. It’s not unreasonable to think certain populations may have to go back into shelter-in-place then.
Singapore has a robust system of testing for and tracking the coronavirus and its citizens went back into shelter-in-place this week. Here in the US we don’t have such a system. Last week the White House ended federal funding for its drive-thru testing site program.
On Friday New York Governor Andrew Cuomo urged the President to invoke the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of antibody tests that can show who has been infected with the coronavirus and built up immunity. That would allow people to go back to work, but the federal government will only be able to produce 2,000 a day in the next two weeks.
As a nation, we need to be doing everything we can to ensure that when this lockdown is over, those who can go out can do so with as much confidence as possible. We need to inject as much certainty into this situation as possible Without testing, that’s not happening.
In an interview with CNBC, Bill Gates — the Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist who has dedicated a significant chunk of his charitable efforts to studying pandemics — said the federal government simply doesn’t seem interested in a unified testing system. This is one of the few variables in this pandemic the government can control, and it’s blowing it.
Testing is one of the only things that will make our beleaguered, shrunken coronavirus economy a little bit bigger. It’s one of the only ways we can impact the ugly twist of this economic downturn, behavior.
Even then, though, the possibility of an outbreak in a workplace, city, or state will change the way our economy works in ways that will make money scarce. We need to be ready for that.
Early missteps allowed the new coronavirus to spread throughout the U.S for weeks before state and local officials implemented strict lockdowns designed to keep the pandemic from spinning further out of control.
Why it matters: The U.S. missed the boat on the kind of swift, early response that would have been most effective, and has been scrambling to catch up ever since. This timeline, compiled from official sources as well as media reports, shows how that all-important time was lost.
Dec. 31, 2019: China reports the novel coronavirus to the World Health Organization.
Jan. 6: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel notice for Wuhan, China.
Jan. 15: The first U.S. case is confirmed, in a man who traveled from Wuhan.
Jan. 17: The World Health Organization publishes a protocol for manufacturing coronavirus tests.
Jan. 30: The WHO declares global health emergency.
Jan. 31: The Trump Administration suspended entry into the U.S. for most foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the past 14 days.
Feb. 5: The CDC begins shipping its diagnostic tests to state and local health agencies.
Feb. 8: Labs report problems with the CDC’s tests.
Feb. 24: President Trump tweets: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb. 29: Washington state reports the first COVID-19 death in the U.S.
March 5: LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics launch coronavirus test for commercial use.
March 9: Trump tweets: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
March 13: Trump declares a national emergency, freeing up $50 billion in federal funds for states and territories.
March 15: 33 states and the District of Columbia closed public schools, according to Education Week. This included the New York City school system, the largest in the country.
March 16: Trump advises Americans to self-isolate for 15 days.
March 19: Trump signed into law an emergency coronavirus relief package for paid sick leave and free testing.
March 23: 9 states had stay-at-home orders.
March 26: The U.S. now leads world in coronavirus cases.
March 29: Trump extends social distancing measures to April 30.
March 30: Nine more states issue stay-at-home orders, bringing the total to 30.
March 31: Trump warns of the potential for 100,000 to 240,000 deaths.
April 6: Twelve more states issue stay-at-home orders, bringing the total to 42.
In recent days, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who has expressed concerns about unemployment insurance being too generous, has used his department’s authority over new laws enacted by Congress to limit who qualifies for joblessness assistance and to make it easier for small businesses not to pay family leave benefits. The new rules make it more difficult for gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers to get benefits, while making it easier for some companies to avoid paying their workers coronavirus-related sick and family leave.
“The Labor Department chose the narrowest possible definition of who qualifies for pandemic unemployment assistance,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has spent two decades working on unemployment programs.
At the same time, frustrations have built among career staff at the Labor Department that the agency hasn’t ordered employers to follow safeguards, including the wearing of masks, recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect workers. Two draft guidance documents written by officials at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Labor Department, to strengthen protections for health-care workers have also not been advanced, according to two people with knowledge of the regulations granted anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.
Scalia, a longtime corporate lawyer who is the son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, has emerged as a critical player in the government’s economic response to the pandemic. Nearly 17 million Americans have applied for unemployment insurance since President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13, and states are struggling to get their systems working to deliver $260 billion in new aid approved by Congress.
Democrats and some Republicans argue that the Labor Department needs to be more aggressive about disbursing money and technical assistance to states to shore up the unemployment insurance system. The department has released only half of $1 billion in administrative support for states that Congress approved almost a month ago.
Sen. Lindsay O. Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday in an interview that he has talked to Scalia about the need to speed things up.
“You could have massive civil unrest if these systems cannot get checks out the door. We’re talking about 20 percent unemployment, maybe even more,” Graham said. “The application process is a nightmare. The state systems are failing.”
Graham said that Scalia has been responsive, but, “I don’t see any action being taken.”
Labor Department officials said Scalia is moving rapidly to help U.S. workers in an unprecedented time. They pointed to a poster and guidebook that OSHA released with steps companies “can take” to reduce worker risk of coronavirus exposure.
“Under Secretary Scalia’s leadership, in the last two weeks, the department has quickly released new rules and guidance for states, businesses, and individual Americans to help those in need of relief,” said Patrick Pizzella, deputy labor secretary. “The department has already distributed nearly $500 million in additional administrative funding to 39 states.”
Still, Scalia has made clear he is wary of taking an excessively lax approach to disbursing aid, an argument that he used to help win GOP support for recent legislation. Writing on Fox Business Network’s website on Monday, he warned that he does not want unemployed people to become addicted to government aid.
“We want workers to work, not to become dependent on the unemployment system,” Scalia wrote with Small Business Administration chief Jovita Carranza. “Unemployment is not the preferred outcome when government stay-at-home orders force temporary business shutdowns.”
On the day the $2 trillion package passed the Senate, Scalia spoke with Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who had raised concerns the law’s new unemployment benefits were too large and would deter workers from returning to jobs.
Scalia told conservative senators that once enacted, his agency would ensure the provisions his agency oversees would not hurt U.S. companies, according to three congressional officials aware of the conversations and granted anonymity to discuss the call.
Narrowing rules
Two recent laws passed by Congress expanded paid and sick leave policies as well as the size and scope of unemployment benefits for Americans. But worker advocates argue that as Scalia begins to implement these measures, his department is being much less generous toward workers than toward companies.
New Labor Department guidance says unemployment benefits apply to gig workers only if they are “forced to suspend operations,” which could dramatically limit options for those workers if their apps are still operating. Other workers also face a high hurdle to qualify for benefits.
The guidance says a worker “may be able to return to his or her place of employment within two weeks” of quarantining, and parents forced to stop work to care for kids after schools closed are not eligible for unemployment after the school year is over. Workers who stay home because they are older or in another high-risk group are also ineligible unless they can prove a medical professional advised them to stop working.
Some states are also having a difficult time figuring out how to verify how much money self-employed workers typically earn. It might require looking at tax documents, which unemployment offices don’t usually have access to.
“Some of the requirements, the standards that we’re being held to, are going to be incredibly difficult to adhere to,” Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman said.
A Labor Department spokesperson said the agency is “providing as much technical assistance and IT support as possible” to states, some of which are using computer systems that are several decades old.
Scalia’s agency is also in charge of overseeing the new paid sick and family leave regulations, which apply to companies with fewer than 500 employees during the pandemic. The law gave the Labor Department authority to exempt businesses with under 50 employees from providing 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a child out of school if the leave policy threatens to bankrupt the company.
Businesses that deny workers paid leave don’t have to send the government any paperwork justifying why. The Labor Department’s guidance asks companies to “retain such records for its own files,” a contrast with the heavy documentation required from gig workers who must prove they were affected by the coronavirus outbreak to get aid.
A Labor Department spokesperson said its rules on paid sick and family leave follow Congress’ direction.
“The department’s new rule balances allowing workers to take paid leave to care for their children with keeping small businesses open — as instructed by Congress,” a spokesperson said.
Tension at OSHA
Some Labor Department staffers and outside critics have also faulted Scalia for his handling of OSHA, which falls under his jurisdiction.
The CDC has issued recommendations for the public and businesses to follow practices such as social distancing and sanitizing workstations. OSHA could make those guidelines mandatory for all employers or for all essential employees but has not done so.
“Some of the OSHA staff is frustrated they can’t do more to protect workers. They want an emergency standard that would require employers to follow CDC guidelines,” said David Michaels, a George Washington University School of Public Health professor who served as assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health in the Obama administration.
Under Scalia, OSHA has also decided against issuing safety requirements to protect hospital and health-care workers, including rules that would mandate nurses and other providers be given masks and protective gear recommended by the CDC when at risk of exposure.
The union National Nurses United petitioned Scalia to increase the requirements during the pandemic, but a union spokeswoman said the Labor Department has not even acknowledged receipt of the letter.
Hospitals have resisted these rules for years. Tom Nickels, the chief lobbyist for the American Hospital Association, said that he hadn’t spoken to Scalia but that his group has opposed these actions in conversations with OSHA staff because widening the use of N95 respirator masks would be impractical. “The equipment is in short supply,” he said. “We can’t get it.”
OSHA also has not taken significant action to protect workers from retaliation when they speak out about dangerous conditions that expose them to coronavirus, Michaels said.
When workers at a manufacturing plant in northern Illinois tried alerting government officials about their concerns about working shoulder to shoulder, the regional OSHA official responded that “all OSHA can do is contact an employer and send an advisory letter outlining the recommended protective measures,” according to an email reviewed by The Washington Post. “This isn’t very helpful for you or your labor group, but it is the best I have to offer,” the email said.
On Wednesday, OSHA sent out a news release reminding companies that it is “illegal to retaliate against workers because they report unsafe and unhealthful working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“OSHA has completely abandoned their responsibility to protect workers on the job,” said Debbie Berkowitz, who worked at OSHA in the Obama administration and is now director of the worker safety and health program at the National Employment Law Project. “I have never felt this way, that every worker is at the mercy at their boss of whether they get protected. People are going to get sick and die, and they don’t have to.”
This week, Scalia said OSHA would take all worker safety concerns seriously.
“We are fielding calls from workers worried about their health and from workers who believe they have been illegally disciplined by their employer for expressing health concerns,” he said. “We will not tolerate retaliation.”
HENRY KOTULA 